From 2007-2011 this blog was mainly about my animals with a bit of off-topic chatter. Then my husband shocked me by confessing to an affair. We've divorced. Life is better than ever!

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

I told some friends yesterday that I would work on a blog entry illustrating how Max forages for her pellets. I imagined what this would look like, but, as often happens when you're dealing with parrots, Max got in the way and had some ideas of her own! I like to think her influence makes this a lot better!

Every morning, I take my roll of adding machine tape and rip off 20 squares of paper. Her Harrison's are next to the paper, so you can kind of see the size. Then, I wrap the paper around the pellets.

As I was doing this last night, Max was watching me, and as soon as I wrapped the pellets up, she started dancing around and saying, "Want some!" Of course I couldn't resist her, and I think it's pretty cute how she eats her pellets now, so I took a video:

Here are images of how I hide pellets in her various toys. While we do have some that were designed specifically for foraging, pretty much any toy can be used in this capacity! However, you do have to take into consideration the foraging skill level of your bird, and not start too hard, or they'll give up. Max is pretty much a master forager now, so I don't worry that she won't have enough to eat! Here are examples of how I hide pellets in 4 of her toys:

The Mother Lode (this last one) has about 5 pellets hidden inside of it!

Here again is where Max's influence on this entry is felt. As I was hiding a pellet inside the Dexter's Doodad, I saw the look in her eye and knew she was going over to get it (both the Dexter's Doodad and the Mother Lode were bought from TNT Toys, in case anyone wants to order one for their own bird). At the end of the video, she drops the pellet. She does do this sometimes, as her cage is lined with newspaper, so then she'll climb down there to eat.